Your Right to Know

A citizens group is suing the Columbus city clerk, saying she improperly threw out its petition
to place a campaign-finance-reform measure on the November ballot.

Acting on the advice of the city attorney’s office, Clerk Andrea Blevins dismissed the Columbus
Coalition for Responsive Government’s petition last month, saying it had not been properly filed
with the city auditor.

Bill Todd, a lawyer who ran for Columbus mayor in 2007, asked the Ohio Supreme Court on
Wednesday to force Blevins to reinstate the petition. The city charter does not specify that
petitions must be filed with the auditor, he said, and Blevins had a duty to warn the coalition in
April if it was incorrectly filing paperwork.

Josh Cox, chief counsel in the office of city Attorney Richard C. Pfeiffer Jr., has said that,
because the charter does not specify where petitioners must file their initial paperwork, the city
must follow state law. State law specifies that it should be filed with the auditor’s office.

That remains the city’s argument, Cox said yesterday. It could take up to two weeks to complete
filing briefs in the case, he said, and then the court is required to work quickly because it is an
election issue.

Wednesday was the deadline to certify issues for the Nov. 4 ballot. If the coalition’s lawsuit
is successful, it’s unclear when its initiative could appear before voters.

Todd did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.

In July, the coalition filed more than 16,000 signatures on a petition to place its
campaign-finance initiative on the November ballot. The coalition wants the city to set aside
$300,000 in casino tax revenue each election for public funding of mayoral and city council
candidates. To receive a share of the money, mayoral candidates would have to agree to a spending
limit of $500,000 and council candidates to a spending limit of $100,000.

City council-backed charter changes on the November ballot would clarify and tighten rules for
filing petitions to initiate laws or overturn existing ones. One change would specify that groups
must file their initial paperwork with the city clerk’s office. Another would place the council,
not the clerk, in charge of deciding whether a petition passes muster.